Latin America faces a world in change

Abstract

A number of significant changes have taken place in the world in the last several years, changes that have affected all aspects of social life from the economic to the political and military. During the decade of the 1980s, and especially in the three years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, we have witnessed a profound restructuring of human society, a process of trans? formation that continues to unfold before our very eyes and one that en? compasses the various ways we understand the world and the received verities that we previously employed to explain it. If we were to attempt to locate the epicenter of these changes, un? doubtedly we would look toward Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, even though the changes that began there have come to include the entire planet, and they have not been alone as sites of initiation of the processes of change that now engulf the entire world. In the economic sphere, quite apart from the ultimate fate of the arms industry and the enormous expenditures associated with it, the very disappearance of the so-called socialist block involved a redefinition of the space dominated by capital, widening the base of its operations and ex? tending the possibilities of realization for the world capitalist market. From this point of view and looking beyond the uncertainties of the short term ? such as the unpromising future now facing most ex-socialist countries ? it is clear that the changes that are taking place in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe will provide increasingly important channels for the infusion of capital and trade, especially from the developed countries. Nevertheless, at least until now, it is in other spheres where what has transpired with "real socialism" is having its major impact. With the down? fall of socialist Europe and the Soviet Union, the international political military situation has changed radically with the practical disappearance of